New York Blood Center

Established in 1964, New York Blood Center (NYBC) is one of the largest community-based, nonprofit blood collection and distribution organizations in the United States. Through the integrated efforts of our blood services operations, NYBC annually provides some one million blood components to nearly 200 hospitals throughout New York City, New Jersey, Hudson Valley, Long Island, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

NYBC provides blood products and services to meet the needs of cancer and surgery patients, accident and burn victims, AIDS and sickle cell anemia patients, transplant recipients, hemophiliacs, and many others. Its Clinical Services Program provides state-of-the-art transfusion services and highly specialized patient care procedures each year at hospitals in the tri-state area, and NYBC's Hemophilia Services Program ensures local hemophilia patients have access to the 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week care, counseling, and clotting factors they require.

The Blood Center also serves as the New York area registry for the National Marrow Donor Program. Since 1989, NYBC has helped register close to 220,000 potential bone marrow donors, making the program the highest donor to patient match record in the world and bringing close to 600 donors through the marrow donation process.

NYBC is home to the National Cord Blood Program (NCBP) at the Howard P. Milstein National Cord Blood Center—the world’s oldest and largest public cord blood bank. NCBP collects, processes, tests, and stores cord blood that mothers donate for use by patients in need of a hematopoietic stem cell transplant. NCBP has provided cord blood transplants to more than 4,100 gravely ill patients (about one-third of all cord blood transplants from unrelated donors worldwide) with inherited metabolic diseases, leukemia, lymphoma, severe aplastic anemia, or lethal diseases of the blood or immune system. The NCBP website provides information about cord blood, donation, patients, transplants, and more technical aspects of program operations.

For five decades, physicians and scientists at NYBC’s Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute (LFKRI) have worked on basic and applied hematological research, paving the way for new blood-related products, techniques, and therapies as well as numerous landmark patents. LFKRI investigators developed the solvent/detergent method for the inactivation of viruses in plasma as well as a practical screening test for hepatitis B and an affordable hepatitis B vaccine. LFKRI research on the plasma proteins fibrinogen and fibrin had a major impact on the understanding of hemostasis and thrombosis.

External links

• New York Blood Center Official Site.